drainednerves: Baby needs rest. Baby needs a hug.
Karlicm: Thank you!
"That was just to pass the time on the flight over. I don't make it a habit to read on the job."
Tony shakes his head at Natalie, and tucks the bookmark back into place before setting the book down again. Howard, Stark and Unabridged. Such a pretentious name for an glorified Wikipedia page. Tony just skimmed through the section dedicated to his father's experimentations with the Arc technology and found nothing that he hasn't heard a million times before.
"No worries. Full of inaccuracies, though. 'Met Maria Collins Carbonell at a Christmas Party' should be followed by 'when he spilled eggnog on her dress'."
Natalie's smile is as amused as it is fleeting. "Everything has been cancelled. We're ready to go whenever you are."
"Fantastic."
A cluster of their bags and suitcases is near the door. Packing up had been quick and effortless, since there was hardly any unpacking in the first place. Natalie is taking everything amazingly well. She and Pepper must be cut from the same cloth, to not be losing her mind over everything that has transpired over the last few hours.
Natalie sweeps up the last spread of sheets on the coffee table by the window. Outside, Monaco looks as bright and lush as ever—which upsets Tony, like after what's happened the day shouldn't be allowed to be so sunny and clear.
"I would offer to reschedule for you, but the best I can do for now is hold off on scheduling anything else." Natalie tucks her folder away and shuts her laptop. "Between how chaotic things are likely about to get—"
"Yeah, no vacations anytime soon. I can find other ways to get out of the house."
"Is there anything in particular you were looking forward to?" she asks, in calculated sweetness. It's not her job to try and put him at ease, but Tony supposes he can appreciate it.
Watching Peter point to anything and everything and shouting, 'Look! Look!' Teaching him French words that he'll actually be able to pronounce. Showing him just how big the world is. "Monaco is Monaco. Be easier to say what I wasn't looking forward to. Here." Tony pushes the book over to her. "I won't stop you, just know that the little booklets we sell to kids in the gift shop are more accurate."
She takes it, lips pursed. "I know you said you don't wish to speak to Colonel Rhodes right now, but he's very adamant. It might be urgent."
"Have I ever told you that I'm clairvoyant? If you give me a second, I can actually type out a script of exactly how the conversation will go."
"Mr. Stark, it would be highly unprofessional of me to interfere or give advice regarding your personal matters, but I would imagine at the moment that Colonel Rhodes is attempting to make contact over what has transpired today."
"Yeah, don't think he won't throw in a dash of personal matters in there for seasoning. He's quite the expert at that."
Tony's phone vibrates in his pocket, as it has been for the past three hours, but he's obligated to check it every single time. Peter has not responded to him yet. Only Ben has given him his reassurance that they're all fine, but he needs to hear it from his son. Tony needs some kind of proof that everything has not come undone—that all the therapy and the time and the talking hasn't been erased, and that Peter's healing process has not gone back to square one.
Of all the seats around the Prix, they had to have the ones right there.
Ben has texted again, but this time it sets Tony's gears in motion.
Plane leaves in just over an hour.
Tony types back, Be there in twenty.
"Alright, Ms. Rushman. You are about to have your first experience of the ol' Shake 'Em Off protocol."
It is always Happy's job to carry out the Shake 'Em Off protocol—which he always does with great determination, always eager to show off his brain power and not just his brute strength. This is why Tony prefers an everyman for a bodyguard (eugh) rather than a highly-trained FBI agent: Happy doesn't need to have a squad of armed men at his disposal, he just needs to know how people think.
Tony first has to convince Natalie to wait a while before taking her own taxi to the airport—saying it'd be to spare her if he got swarmed. As for Tony, he donned his old friends Mr. Hat and Mr. Mask and snuck out the back door to the streets, which he knows are warm and vibrant and teeming with culture in every brick, but now seem as dismal as a New York alley during a cold rain.
Three turns from the hotel, the black car curls around a corner, and Tony sticks his hand out to hail down his 'taxi'. For added effect, he gives a fake address in French as he climbs in, not that Happy could even try to say okay back. The tinted glass of the windows washes Monaco out, which pleases Tony. More fitting for the mood, and now his eyes won't be drawn to look at all the experiences that Peter won't have.
A few more streets, and the car slows again. Ben and May tuck their luggage into the trunk, but Peter scrambles into the back too fast for anyone to scold him.
Tony hugs him tight, though he knows that Peter is hugging him. It makes him feel almost guilty, as if he should've known better than to nearly be murdered in front of Peter. Of all the times and places Mr. Ivan Vanko could have made his attempt on Tony's life, he just had to do it when his son was there and watching.
"Are you okay?" Peter asks. His voice is muffled into Tony's T-shirt, but he doesn't sound that worried, already comforted but asking regardless.
"M'fine. Not a scratch. What about you? Are you okay?"
He isn't expecting Peter to look so…well, pissed when he pulls back. Tony wants to say that he's still a child and can't fully understand, but he knows that seven or seventeen or seventy, his father almost got julienned by a psychopath with giant electric whips and asked if Peter was okay.
"Alright. Sore subject."
"I'm okay."
"I hear you." Has he ever had to use his take it easy voice on Peter before? Woof.
Peter shuffles to sit right next to him, and ducks his head when the door opens again. Ben climbs in first, and as May follows, she puts on a perfect pedestrian voice and tells Happy, "To the airport, please."
Happy gives a double-intended thumbs-up and sets the car in motion. Everyone buckles in, and they all fall apart. Tony can almost feel the car grinding down on the road from the sudden weight. They are safe in a little car driving down the street, and it feels very, very wrong, as it always does when something quakes the Earth but it keeps turning regardless.
Ben runs his hands down his face until his cheeks drag off his jaw. Then he straightens up and asks, "You sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine, Scout's Honor. Didn't even make a dent in me." Tony realizes then that there are only three Parkers in the car. "Where's Richard?"
"He, uh…He decided to meet us there. He had to take care of something."
It's such a vague answer that Ben might as well have been silent, but Tony doesn't think a thing of it. Whether the Parkers are driving in one car or a hundred is so very inconsequential right now. "What about all of you?"
"We're okay." May nods and nods and keeps nodding, until the auburn hair in her bun falls loose and she has to push her glasses back up her nose. "We're okay. Okay. Okay! Okay. O-kay."
Ben pats her knee. "Okay?"
"We're all okay. Okay. Now I need to know…" May looks down at Peter, still at Tony's side, while her lips squirm on her face like a lid on a boiling pot, until finally she spits, "What the S-H-I-T just happened?!"
Peter is so offended he sits up pin-straight. "I know how to spell 'shit'!"
Happy, May, Tony, and Ben chorus one great, booming HEY that seems to shake the whole car. Peter falls back into his seat again but doesn't apologize.
Tony pats him on the head and explains. Or tries his damndest. "I have never met him in my life. No one knows how me managed to sneak by security, but they have him detained now and took away all his toys. Probably going to be sitting in a jail cell until the end of time."
"But why?!" May grasps the air for answers, but her hands stay empty. "Was he with the Ten Rings? Was that it?"
"No, he…" Tony chews on the already tender flesh of his cheek while Vanko's words echo between his ears. You come from a family of thieves and butchers. "I'm just going to say that before I turned things around, Stark Industries was in the business of hurting other people. Not that you need me to say that, but still. Most of them aren't capable of doing what this guy did, but I'm positive that a lot of people out there would like some justice."
Peter looks up at him, frowning. "I thought you made weapons to get rid of bad guys?"
There are so many ways to explain war to a child, but only a few are honest, and honesty can be confusing. Lips pucker as though refusing out of their owners' will to even try to begin. Good guys and bad guys, innocent lives, needless violence…
Tony answers by not answering at all. "I know that you're going to hate hearing this, but you'll get it when you're older. It's something that even adults really don't know how to explain, alright?"
Peter pouts, of course, but doesn't argue. Shaking his head, Ben asks, "So that's it? Someone hurt by all the weapons you made or…?"
Tony taps his finger on the armrest while he thinks. That's not the truth, but Tony doesn't know what the truth is. All he knows is that his father is responsible, but to what degree is a mystery. Did Howard create a weapon that ruined everything Vanko knew? Or was this more personal? Anton Vanko—a man killed by bomb branded with the Stark Industries logo, or Howard's own two hands?
Peter speaks again, and it makes them all squirm. "Maybe he just wanted to hurt Dad? Sometimes bad people are just bad, right?"
"Maybe. That might just be it." Tony nods and hums like this is a legitimate working theory, and Peter nods back. He's been doing this a lot—inserting himself into the adults' conversations to prove himself. Usually it's in the vein of hearing Tony and Ben talking about politicians abusing their power and Peter joining in with a story about his homeroom teacher scolding him when he wasn't doing anything wrong. Not…this. He turns back to Ben and May and goes on, "I am not one-hundred-percent positive. He was pretty gloomily vague about it—"
"Wait." May's eyes squint to slivers behind her glasses. "You talked to him?"
In contrast, Peter's eyes boggle out of his skull. "Why?!"
"To answer this question. There were guards five feet away, he had no weapons, and they stripped him to his tighty-whities, alright? Safe and sound." In spite of his promise, May and Peter's noses remain scrunched on their faces. Or perhaps that's more directed at the 'tighty-whities'. "Like I said, though, not much to say."
"So, nothing? Just an angry nobody who wanted to get some payback?" Ben's hands flop about in a secondhand-embarrassment-inducing mimicry of the electric whips that had spliced the racecars in half. "How did he—the—the things—"
"He is a surprisingly intelligent angry nobody who wanted to get some payback. Either that or he had enough money to get someone else to make it for him."
As he says this, Tony swears he can feel the palladium festering beneath his skin, as it has been for the past few hours. As though finally being acknowledged by someone else has awakened it, and it's taunting Tony that it won't be ignored for any longer.
Ivan Vanko isn't just intelligent. More than that, he knows what palladium poisoning looks like. He knows that the Arc Reactor is doing it, when the Arc technology has been the most vied-after secret in the world of science. More than that, that knowledge is not from sheer luck or research or long coffee-filled nights reading the inaccuracy-filled biographies people wrote of Iron Man's life and his father's. It's personal. Someone had to tell him that, and common sense and a working brain tells Tony it would be Vanko's father.
It is shaking to know that Howard has done something to the Vankos to spur Ivan into doing something that was as much of a risk to his own life as it was to Tony's.
It just isn't surprising.
"What's most important," Tony goes on, "is that he's taken care of. He's not getting out anytime soon."
May pulls her hair back so tightly it seems her scalp is about to peel off. "But that it happened at all, between him and—and—"
She clearly tries her best, but she can't help but look at Peter. His attention has been caught by the washed-out view out of the window—perhaps trying to soak up what little of Monaco he can—but turns back when he hears the silence. He sits there, saying nothing, and it's impossible to tell if he knows. May shifts in her seat, Ben curls and uncurls his fingers, and Tony scratches at his neck.
Usually they'd be trying to figure out how to shoo him away from the conversation without pulling the adults are talking card he hates so much. Why don't you go play a video game, Peter? Let's finish up that homework, okay, Peter? Now the problem is that…Well. They're in a car.
Then Happy clears his throat, and looks at Peter through glances at the rearview. "Hey, Peter, no one's claimed the shotgun. What do you say?"
Instead of rocketing forward, Peter looks at all the adults in turn. He knows. He obviously knows. But he's either tired or he just doesn't want to start this fight right now, because he only says a quiet okay.
It takes help from May and Ben, a great deal of wiggling, and an elbow to Happy's ear ("Agh—I'm good. I'm good.") for Peter to finally make it up there. Once he's buckled it, Happy nonchalantly puts up the privacy screen. The last thing heard is Peter's silence and Happy advising him to maybe sit a little low because he doesn't know if Monaco has a law about children sitting in the front seat.
May pulls out her hair tie and collapses back into her seat. She doesn't even react when the back of her head hits the screen. "I don't know if I can stomach this." Ben and Tony say nothing, because there's nothing more to add. "What happened with Stane and the giant robot suit, I—okay. Crazy as hell, but okay. You having a flying suit and fighting terrorists and stopping robberies with your—those—pew-pew things in your hand, I learned how to deal with that. But I can't deal with this. I can't deal with just a completely random person being able to make those giant lightning-whip-things so they can kill you. That is too much. It's like a neverending fever dream."
"Alright, but…" Ben moves his hands around as though it'll help him gather the right words. "Tony didn't mean for this to happen; he didn't ask this guy to come here and—"
"Yeah, Ben, I know he didn't mean for this to happen. You don't have to tell me because I never said that."
"I'm just saying—"
"Don't just say stuff that doesn't need to be just said. I wasn't blaming Tony, I never said anything like that—"
"Alright, alright. Hey." Tony waves both of them down, feeling probably more uncomfortable than he's ever felt in his life. May huffs and Ben sighs. Tony almost makes a sound himself—having to be Mr. and Mrs. Parker's mediator, what is happening to his life… "May wasn't blaming me, so no need to just say. And she's right. Even if Whip-It had the most eloquent reason on the planet, it's a little difficult to call this an 'isolated incident'."
"I just…" May tugs at her scalp again. "Oh my god…I cannot remember what it was like to have a normal life."
"Tell me about it."
Ben's eyes follow the blurs passing through the windows. People going shopping, meeting with their friends for lunch, families on vacation.
"I guess I am worried if this is 'normal' now. We can't—it's not your fault, Tony, but I don't think we can just keep going on waiting for the next 'big thing' to happen. I know that sounds weird, like we should expect to deal with more maniacs with super gadgets trying to kill you, but…"
"This has happened twice now," May finishes for him. "And it shouldn't have happened once. Ever. Not in this reality. What the hell."
"And this is actually worse," Ben continues. He's never sounded so helpless before; he's given up the fight for optimism. "What happened with Stane, I could spend the next five hours talking about how horrible that was, but at least he was…At least we figured him out in the end, at least we knew that it was a horrible personal vendetta. The only reason he got to make that giant robot-Transformer thing was because he had the resources to do it. But this was just…someone. Just a complete stranger you've never met a day in your life who you maybe hurt in an indirect way."
Tony deliberates if telling them what little truth he knows would be helpful or not. Oh, no, don't worry—this was a personal vendetta, too. Now everything makes sense!
Even if Tony can string things together in a semi-logical way, the Parkers cannot. They do not see it as the continuing consequences of what Howard did, and the legacy Tony had continued. All they know is that if Mary had gotten together with any other man on the planet, this wouldn't be happening to them. Their lives are the way that they are because a waiter spilled champagne on Tony's suit.
Maybe there exists a timeline like that. Maybe he's George Bailey, but the inverse—the world with him in it is not a wonderful life.
"I just want to say, first of all, I'm sorry."
Ben and May speak at once. "I'm not trying to say—" "We didn't mean—"
"No, hey, just hold on. Let me finish, alright?" He waves them down again. "I'm sorry that you are having to deal with this, and I'm sorry that you have to keep dealing with this. It doesn't matter if I sent a handwritten invitation to Mr. Vanko asking him to slice-and-dice my racecar in the middle of the Prix. At the end of the day, this came back to me."
May stares a hole into the floor of the car, and Ben's voice struggles to get out of his throat, but ultimately they sit there in undenying silence.
"So what I would like to know now is how I can make this up to you. Whatever you need. I can hire a personal driver for you, I can try to get some security at your apartment—your apartments, I can—"
"That's…That's sweet, Tony." May is shaking her head again as she says it. "But all that's going to do is write THESE PEOPLE AREN'T NORMAL across our forehead. Peter can't come to school in a motorcade. There is no way that I can explain to people that I can't afford to replace my iPhone every time a new model comes out, but I can afford to have a personal bodyguard around." Tony almost says that he would not mind providing quality, non-Apple phones to her, but her withering glare shuts him up. "Unless we want to come up with something like, oh, yeah, that's Gary, my brother. Why did I never mention him before? I don't know, but he lives with us now."
"Also, I don't think we need protection." Ben shrugs, then grimaces because now is not the time to be shrugging. "I mean, the only people who know about Peter are the people we trust the most, right?"
"For now," counters May. "Then what? What happens when someone finally does figure it out? What happens when they come to our home, or Peter's school? It doesn't matter if we have the entire U.S. Army protecting us, that's it. The only way we could even try to have a normal life after that is if we got into some kind of protection program, got shipped to the middle of Nebraska, and changed our names to Maya and Bennett and Percy or something."
Ben nods along until the end, when his brows furrow. "Why would our…Why would our fake names still sound like our real names?"
"Seriously, Ben?"
"I'm just asking, it seems…counterintuitive."
"I was being hypothetical. I was exaggerating. I very obviously was."
"For what it's worth," Tony cuts in, again, "you will have the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. organization protecting you guys. But like you said, it's not just about safety. The issue is that, to be very candid here, I don't know what to do if not protect you guys. I would love nothing more than for you to live a completely normal life of morning newspapers and Taco Tuesdays, but I don't know if I can give you guys that."
Apology oozes from every word—I'm sorry I met Mary, I'm sorry that she died and led you to me, I'm sorry that I'm me. He just doesn't know what else to do but apologize. He can't just turn back time and make it so their paths never crossed.
May and Ben mimic one another by holding their hands over their mouths as they think. Or try to figure out how to say what they're about to say.
"Maybe we should…" May refuses to look at Tony, instead focusing on picking beneath her fingernails. "Maybe we should cut back on the trips for now? Just keep it to phone calls and video chats?"
Ben's frown is so heavy it seems to weigh his jaw down. "He has to stay in Peter's life somehow."
"I know, that's why I said phone calls and video chats!"
"That's not staying in his life, that's just checking in every now and then—"
"Okay, so what happens when he and Peter are going out for ice cream one day and another maniac with a rocket launcher goes after them?"
"How would they know they'd be there? This Vanko guy knew Tony would be at the Prix because it was on the news and everything."
"So what?! Maybe Tony's mask just slips one day, or Peter finally says something without meaning to, and then that's that. I'm just saying maybe go low contact for a while."
"Well, how long is 'a while' going to be? When's the due date?"
May closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Ben, I know that you think it's really important for a parent to always be there for their child—"
"Why is that—I don't understand how that's a bad thing to think?"
"It's not, I'm just saying that you specifically really think that because of everything that happened with your parents—"
Ben's walls almost physically manifest around him, iron and riveted and three feet thick. He looks away from his wife who now lives in a different apartment in favor of the outside world and its glimpses at the mundane. "Alright."
"That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to say you're just being emotional, I'm just saying that maybe you're making this a little personal. Ben, look at me. Please?"
Their voices fade into a fog, somewhere faraway and dark. Tony is sitting in the car with the Parkers, his son, and Happy, in a little car winding through Monaco—and he also isn't. It's impressive how he can still disassociate even in such a tiny space.
He was about to say something, though he didn't know what—only that it would be the winner of a battle between his heart and his mind. Before, anyone else that could hurt Peter after Stane was hidden away behind a wall of hypotheticality. Maybe, could-be, not yet. That wall is gone now. They exist. Whether they be two-faced chameleons who worm their way into Tony's life, or strangers all the way across the ocean.
They could hurt Peter. That's still hypothetical, but in a way that sounds like a ticking clock. It seems that Vanko wants to hurt Tony for what Howard did. Now it seemed like a matter of time until someone hurts Peter for whatever Tony did.
Yet still Tony wants to protest, because being with Peter repels a fear that he can't put a name to. Or maybe it's several fears, many fears. The fear of being alone, the fear of losing him, the fear of falling back into his old ways, the fear of being nothing but a bad memory, the fear of becoming Howard.
If Tony's brain lost to his heart, then he was going to plead to stay somehow. Probably come up with a thousand unimaginably complicated ways to invisible at Peter's side. Perhaps suggest that they go to the most remote and desolate places on the Earth if it meant spending time with him, meeting under highway overpasses and eating lunch in dark alleys.
Then Tony remembers he is going to die soon.
Meaning this entire conversation is meaningless.
This is it: the absolute one and only part of is death that Tony can be thankful for.
He could tell Ben and May right now that they don't need to worry about anything; and that they don't need to worry about compromising their lives anymore. In just a short while now, it will all be over.
That's good.
That's great.
Would they like to hear that?
Probably. It would put so many of their worries at ease. No more money, no more travel, no more trauma. Just taking care of a boy they love.
But what else does it mean, for Tony? It means that this could have been Tony's last day with Peter. Their last outing together was not sitting in a dark movie theater or holding up their arms as they rocketed down a rollercoaster. It was Peter watching Tony almost die.
"Almost die." As if the fact that he didn't is some kind of relief.
Peter can't watch someone almost lacerate his father to pieces and then lose him anyway not a month later. He can't take that…but he's going to have to, isn't he?
So is it better to give him a short time of levity before Tony's gone, or let him go now and not bother letting him heal?
He looks through the fog for just a moment to listen to May and Ben argue, without any heat but somehow worse because of it. He can't agree too quickly. That will scream that something is horribly wrong with him; they know by now how hard he'll try to stay with Peter. However relieved they'd be to know the truth, that's not an option, either. He can't tell Peter, so he can't tell the Parkers—he cannot put them in a position where Peter may hate them when he's older, when he finds out that they hid it from him, too.
He hadn't hated Vanko before, not exactly. Even after he tried to kill him, Tony was not consumed with a white-hot rage. He was just baffled, too busy trying to wrap his head around why to hate him.
He does now. Even if it all comes back to Howard or Tony, Vanko just had to pull this shit so close to his deadline.
"I understand," he says. He doesn't even bother trying to quiet them first. Their hot hisses at each other stop, and they give him their full attention. "And I agree. We can't risk Peter's safety like that."
Ben's eyes flutter at him. Uncomprehending. "But you can't—Peter's going to be upset—"
"Better upset than in the hospital, right?" May and Ben both wince like he'd struck them, and Tony wants to strangle himself. He can't be cold just because he feels cold. "I'm not going to completely erase him out of my life. I know that keeping contact over the phone isn't ideal, but Peter's old enough to understand why, even if he isn't happy about it."
May nods but doesn't look happy in the slightest that he agrees with her. Tony wonders if this will be the last time he sees her, too, and it sickens him how much she's changed. When he'd first met her, she was the type of person who radiated life, all warm smiles and wild hair and polka dots. Now she's been sapped dry, whitewashed. That's how she's changed ever since he entered her life.
"I guess, though…Ben's kinda got a point," she says, quiet and creaking. Has Tony ever heard her voice rise with anything other than stress? When did he last hear her crack a joke, or laugh through her mouth instead of her nose? "It's not like we can put a timer on it, but you have to see him sometime."
Ben has no response; he only stares down at his hands. Has there always been that much silver in his hair? It was always there, a little hint at his temples, but it seems to have seeped further. He's always had lines in the corners of his eyes, too, and before anyone would think they were from smiling so wide, but they are only crow's feet now and nothing more.
"We'll figure it out," Tony says to May and Ben, residents of Pottersville. "Maybe it'll take months, or a year. Peter's strong. This won't break him."
Tony doesn't know when the fast-forward button was hit, but suddenly they're in the airport parking lot. The doors open, letting in too much light and color for Tony to take. The privacy screen rolls back down, but Peter's already out and helping with the bags. Tony watches through Peter wrestles with a duffel as big as he is, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk and arms shaking. He seems okay. Maybe he's not, but he seems okay.
Tony stays in the car as they say goodbye. He hides in the shadows while the Parkers stand in their last bit of European sunlight with their ballcaps and sunglasses. Even if he was out with them, would this be any less awkward? He and May and Ben say their farewells, but there are no shoulder hugs or waves. Ben doesn't do that specifically-male action of joining their hands together and tapping Tony's shoulder against his own. They lift up the corners of their mouths because you do that when you say goodbye.
Peter only drops the colossal duffel bag (which Ben hastily sweeps up, as if he won't notice) to hug Tony one more time. It's tight, but stiff. Tony's come to learn that hugging is an entire language to Peter. Loose but rigid means he doesn't want to hug at all. One quick squeeze and then limpness means he's sleepy and can't do much. Tight but stiff means there's something on his mind.
When he steps back, Peter turns to his aunt and uncle and says, very succinctly, "Can I talk to Dad for a minute?"
Of course, May and Ben nod and okay, take the bags and walk until they're in eyesight but not earshot. It still isn't easy—knowing it won't be a happy conversation, that this will be his last time seeing Tony for a while. And having to realize that he is growing up faster than any of them can keep up with. When did he become old enough to ask, Can I be alone? Can you go away, adults?
Even once the unwanted audience is gone, Peter doesn't speak right away. For a moment Tony thinks he's struggling to meet his eyes, but then he realizes Peter is staring at the light of the Arc Reactor through his T-shirt. He does that often, but usually looks away soon after being caught. People stare, and that's fine. Tony imagines that the sight elicits an invasive sort of empathy—that when people look at it, they feel something cold and metal in their chests, too. He wonders if it's like that for Peter, or if he sees the one thing that is supposed to be keeping his father alive.
"I have to tell you something," he mutters.
Tony fights not to let his face shift. After today, it's difficult to imagine any reason why Peter would have something to say to him, instead of just sitting there and doing nothing but being affected. "What's that?"
"I was with him. Before the race."
Now Tony can't help but squint. "Who?"
"The…the bad guy. With the whips."
Tony squints harder. Peter's spoken so well since the day that they met, why only now is he speaking nonsense gibberish? It's not mumbled or slurred, Tony can make out the syllables crisp and clear—the-bad-guy-with-the-whips. He can accept that he is referring to Vanko. But it's gibberish nonetheless.
It's literally unthinkable. He cannot think it. Peter goes on, quick and rushed and moving his hands, and only then does it begin to seep in, even though it's a statement as cut-and-dry as the sky is blue or the grass is green.
"We were trying to go to our seats and Uncle Richard accidentally knocked over this stand selling these—these cups with flags on them, and we were all trying to help pick them up and I was trying to get one that kept rolling away and it fell down a bunch of stairs." He takes a breath. "So I went down just to go get it real quick and the door got locked so I got stuck so I tried to find someone to help me and I found him."
Alright, Tony, process. But he can't. The words only come out faster as Peter takes his confusion for anger, not helping the cogs that are already spinning out of control. He has two incompatible truths right now: that there was no possible way that Peter crossed paths with Ivan Vanko by himself just a short time before he tried to kill Tony, but that also, Peter was not lying.
"What did you say to him?" Tony asks, but it doesn't feel like he's asking, it feels like he's humoring a made-up story. "What did he say to you?"
"He just…I tried asking for help in French, and he asked me if I spoke English, and I asked for help in English, and then…"
Peter's mouth has formed a distressed M shape. He wishes that the truth was that Vanko said horrible, cruel, threatening things to him, the way Stane had spoken to him when he was leaving the mansion all those months ago—but that isn't the truth, and Tony understands that that is somehow more distressing. Even if he doesn't understand anything else yet.
"Alright, then what?"
The M deepens, and his voice quiets. "He helped me look. He helped me find Uncle Ben and then he left."
If the impossibility was there before, it's concrete now, and Tony is beginning to wonder if Peter suffered from a hallucination or a bad dream that he remembers as reality, because those are the only ways he could be so earnest about something that could never happen.
Tony cannot tell Peter that it's impossible that the man who tried to kill him and could have killed many others without a second thought also…helped a little boy find his family. So he just keeps asking. "He didn't hurt you? Nothing?"
"No. He just picked me up on his shoulders so I could see better."
Tony's guts twists into knots. Maybe the image of Vanko crushing Peter in his massive hands would be easier to swallow. Vanko carrying Peter on his shoulders to find his aunt and uncles, not so much.
He rejects it because of the unlikelihood, the mere chances that they just so happened to cross paths today, at the Grand Prix attended by thousands, when Peter wouldn't have even been here if Tony hadn't invited him and his family not even a week ago.
There's something else, though, but while everything else is piecing together, it does not. Tony does not let it. He lets it stay as a shapeless concept in his mind without any words, because it's just too terrible:
If Vanko really, truly didn't say anything to Peter, and did nothing but help one child out of what could have been hundreds at the Prix alone, then he didn't know that Peter was his son.
But if he did…
If he did…
Even if Vanko refused to give any concrete answers when Tony talked to him, he had made it clear that he held a certain sentiment:
A Stark is a Stark.
Tony spirals so far down the rabbit hole of maybe's and might-have's, of all the states of Peter that could have been, he forgets about the Peter right in front of him. He is alive, and he is unhurt, but he is also upset.
Scared? Is he scared? There are no tears in his eyes, no wobble to his lip, but even so Tony thinks about pulling him in and crushing him close, telling him that Daddy's here and he'll always be safe, never minding that Peter never has called him 'Daddy', only 'Dad', because in times like these Tony's instinct to protect his son from all harm grows so powerful that he makes himself believe that he has always done so, a false reality where he was there when Peter was young enough to call him 'Daddy' and not 'Dad'.
With his determination to be grown, a child but not a baby, Peter has formed so many new boundaries—don't carry him even if he falls asleep in the car, don't peel his apples for him, don't say you'll understand when you're older if you don't want to tell him something. He also does not like to be squeezed at the slightest issue, so even though Peter is so obviously upset, Tony does not hug him because Peter wants to talk, not hug.
"Okay. Well." Tony clears his throat. Has he even accepted it yet? He doesn't think he has, but he has to at least pretend he has for now. "I know that it's really scary to think about what might have happened, but it didn't happen. So you don't have to worry—"
"I'm not scared. But I feel bad."
"Bad? Bad as in 'guilty'?" Peter nods. "Why?"
They're all miniscule, but Peter starts to twitch all over, his fingers and his shifting feet and his stiff shoulders. He's trying to eliminate all his tics like shrugging and kicking his feet, and Tony thinks he should tell him that even adults do that. He will later.
"He was right there," Peter stresses. He may not be talking to Tony anymore. "If I did something then maybe he wouldn't have been able to—maybe he couldn't hurt anyone later."
Tony can feel no relief that his son is now wracked with terror, not when it's to learn that he's wracked with guilt instead. This isn't a Peter thing, he knows, and that just makes it all the more confusing. How do children find a way to blame themselves for something so out of their control? Tony doesn't like to remember his childhood much, but especially his early childhood, when he hadn't yet accepted that his father didn't love him and still foolishly fought for him. He does remember being quite the momma's boy, though, and he remembers a winter wherein he asked his mother to see a snowman he'd built outside. She had slipped on ice and bruised her leg, and Tony was so certain that it was his fault, because it would never have happened if he hadn't asked her to look at his snowman.
"Alright. Alright, listen." Tony squeezes Peter's arms, and he lets him. "It's normal to think stuff like that. Everyone does, even adults. Everyone regrets stuff, every day. I regret having onions in my quiche this morning because my breath still stinks no matter how many mints I wolf down." Peter smiles, but corrects it quickly. "And it's normal to regret stuff the way you are, but you shouldn't be. Alright? You had no idea who he was or what he was going to do. No one did. What if instead of helping you, he just bumped into Uncle Ben? Would you say it was Uncle Ben's fault for what he did?"
Peter shakes his head, tired. "No."
"No. You didn't do anything wrong. I don't think so, your family doesn't think so, no one thinks so. So you shouldn't, either."
Slowly but surely Peter's chin has risen up until finally he looks his father straight-on. But Tony is unprepared for him to ask, "What if I did?"
"What if you did what?"
"What if I did know?"
He almost laughs, because it reminds him of when Peter was in his phase of unending questions, what if and but why and how come. He means it as seriously as ever. "Then you'd go and tell someone."
"But what if he got away before I could? What if I lost him?"
Now the hint of smile building on Tony's mouth drops. Peter obviously wants him to give one specific answer, and he will not.
"Alright, Pete, you're not going to want to hear this but it's the only answer I can give you. If you tried to fight Vanko yourself, he would have killed you. That's really harsh, but it's true and that's why I have to say it. You never, ever, try to take on someone dangerous by yourself."
"Because I'm a kid?"
"That's part of it, but even if you were a hundred years old I don't want you going Rambo on anyone."
"You fight bad guys all the time."
Tony's eyebrow quirks up. Fair point. "I don't fight bad guys, Iron Man fights bad guys. With particle beams and torpedoes and turrets."
"So what if I was older and had stuff like that? What if I had guns or something?"
Probably you don't have to be a parent to know that a child being so blasé about guns and killing is worrisome at best. Then again, the older you get, the more gray seeps into your black and white world. Stane was bad and Tony killed them. The Ten Rings were bad and Tony killed some of them. Now every day he goes out and beats people to pulp because they're bad and that's that.
This is a very complex topic, though, and not one to have when Tony's hiding in a car and Ben and May are waiting for them to finish so they can catch their flight and a maniac just tried to cut Tony to pieces.
"I think it's time for you to go, bud." Tony pulls Peter's cap tighter on his head. His hair has gotten so long; it needs a cut. "That is a long talk and you have a flight to catch."
Peter lowers his eyes again, disappointed but not pouting. He sincerely wanted Tony to give him permission to go full vigilante at seven years old, and even as he pulls at the too-long straps of his backpack, Tony bounces between scolding him and comforting him.
Peter looks over at his aunt and uncle. They do not wave him to come on, don't urge him, but they've turned their bodies sideways—waiting for him to fall in line with them. Taking a step back, Peter looks back to Tony, teeth worrying his lip.
"Am I going to see you before your birthday party?"
He can't frown deeper, so Tony grits his teeth instead. How will Peter feel after he's gone, knowing he didn't have any part in Tony's last birthday?
"I'm going to be candid with you for a second, bud—"
"Candid."
"Honest. After what happened today, I think it might be best for us to put our hangouts on hold for a while. Even for birthdays."
Peter's sneakers shift. "I want to give you your present. I'm not going to the party, so I need to give it to you sometime."
"Yeah, I know. But hey, remember what I said about the party? It's not that I don't want you there, and it's only a little because I'm worried that everyone will see you're way cooler than I am. It's just—"
"It's an adult party. I know." Tony thinks about saying something. What does 'adult' mean for Peter? Drugs and alcohol and bad language? He thinks Tony will be doing all that. Then Peter goes on, "Is it like when our teachers come over and play kickball with us at recess? It's kind of weird when they do that."
"Th—Yeah. It's like that. You got it."
Another step back, and another look to Ben and May. He tugs on his backpack straps harder. "What about the Expo? We still haven't gone together yet."
Ah, shit. Can they still do that? Tony can't break a promise, but now he's wondering how he ever thought they'd be able to do the hat-and-mask routine at a place where his face is slapped on every surface. It was probably a bad idea even before what happened today.
And hell…Tony may be dead before they can go, anyway. Maybe he was always going to break his promise.
"We will figure that out. Last hug?" Tony holds his palms up, inviting, and Peter takes it. He's realized lately that he doesn't initiate hugs nearly as often as Peter does, but only because he can't forget the days when he pressured Peter to do it. He lives in fear of making his own son that uncomfortable ever again. "I want you to take care of yourself. And Aunt May and Uncle Ben, too. I wasn't going to say anything, but Ben has a serious sass problem. Send him to bed without dessert for a few nights and that'll straighten him out."
Peter smiles without showing teeth or making sound, and that's fine. After today, no one can ask him to laugh.
"Bye. Love you."
"Love you too, sport."
Tony stays sitting with the door open, just so he can keep his eyes on them through the tinted glass. Ben and May and Peter shrink and shrink, and like heat shimmer they just disappear. Thus ends their Monaco vacation.
As for Tony, he has about three minutes until his own plane is scheduled for takeoff, and he decides to spend it locked in the confines of the car, where there is no world but that of leather seats and tinted glass. He feels wronged, for the first time since he discovered the poisoning. He's angry at Vanko and angry at Howard, but most of all he's angry at the world. It couldn't have waited just a little while longer. It just had to make things worse when they were already unsalvageable.